Winamp & Shoutcast Forums - Screeching Winamp

Hi folks, and thanks to the nice guys at Nullsoft for creating this most excellent of media players, and what's more, keeping it free.

Anyway, Winamp is my preferred media player for all things digital, mainly because of the wonderful digital EQ. It beats out Windows Media Player any day. I'm a huge fan of anime, and using Winamp (and a little help from IRC), I'm able to watch my favorite shows until my eyelids pull a Benedict Arnold on me. However, after having Winamp open and running for about two hours or so (sometimes more, sometimes less), it develops a faint, but noticeable high pitched whine (I'm not sure, but it's somewhere around 15-16khz - right up there in the "extremely annoying" range, with high-voltage CRTs). Anyway, I can solve the problem temporarily by closing out of Winamp and restarting the player, but that's only a temporary fix. The problem remanifests itself after about four minutes (simply stopping the file doesn't help at all). I've tried to equalize it out, but it seems to be directly linked to the sound card, because even if I mute Winamp, the speakers still pop and hiss slightly, as if something were trying to arc across them. What's more, the original video sound diminishes as the whine increases. The problem can be completely cured by restarting the system (but I'm running a Microsoft OS, and, well, they don't take lightly to being restarted every hour), but again, a few episodes in, and the problem reappears. Please help, if at all possible. My system specs are as follows:

Winamp v.2.91
Customized EQ settings (not that it makes a difference)
Windows XP Pro Edition v.2002
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor, running at 1.7 gHz
256 MB RAM
Creative SB PCI 512 sound card
A whole bunch of sound codecs
if you need any more, contact me at guntherpatierno@yahoo.com

Of course, the whole system is kinda whacked...I assembled it piecemeal, and customized everything so that the system is barely recognizeable as Windows. Also, the problem doesn't come up in Windows Media Player.

Again, the problem only affects video, in particular, AVI files. MPEGs don't seem to be affected (but then again, I don't play MPEG files too often). I don't know about WMVs or any other format, but since almost all of my video files are AVI, it's a pain in the neck.

Thank you for your time.